Sci-fi title cards, supermarket packaging, fashion logos and theatre posters… Albertus has had a long, and remarkably varied, life.

Commissioned by Stanley Morison and designed by Wolpe in 1932, the typeface’s stern, commanding appearance earned it a role in any environment where a strong voice was required. Wolpe modelled its flaring serifs on his time spent designing letters in bronze, which explains its uncompromising, chiselled appearance.

3 / 3 Albertus Nova re-introduces a number of alternate capital letters initially created by Wolpe, including an M with an unusual lower apex, a W with crossing center strokes, a closed-loop 2 and an open ampersand.

Albertus was the starting point for Toshi Omagari’s five-typeface Wolpe revival collection, which began when he discovered original drawings for the design – which Omagari describes as breaking a lot of typeface conventions. Albertus’s upper case M has middle strokes that descend only part way, not reaching the baseline, while the uppercase U has a stem on the right-hand side.

Using the original sketches, Omagari was able to restore some of the designer’s original intentions – such as the flared elements that Wolpe had to compromise on as a result of the limitations of technology of the time.

1 / 4 Omagari studied original drawings by Berthold Wolpe (pictured) when he began reviving the typeface for Albertus Nova.

2 / 4 Copper plates of Albertus characters fabricated during the original production process.

3 / 4 Albertus appears in the Monotype Newsletter in April 1936.

4 / 4 From 1950, Albertus could be seen in kitchen cupboards across the UK, as Supermarket chain Sainsbury's adopted the typeface across all of it's packaging. The move was the brainchild of Managing Director, Alan Sainsbury in a bid to emulate the harmonized look of of big supermarkets in the US.

Perhaps one of Wolpe’s best-known creations, Albertus is familiar to many designers for its use on signage for the City of London – adopted to create a strong identity during the city’s post-war rebuilding.

In honour of Wolpe’s time in London’s Stockwell, design studio Atelier Works also used the typeface for street signs in the borough, as part of a regeneration initiative.

Other uses – many of which have become iconic for the design community – include an entire range of packaging for British supermarket Sainsbury’s in the 1950s, and as a logotype for luxury fashion brand Loewe in 2014, designed by studio M/M Paris.

1 / 2 Albertus Nova takes the best of the original Albertus design - sharp, flaring serifs - and expands the original character set to include a set of small capitals and five weights; Thin, Light, Regular, Bold and Black.

2 / 2 As well as adding brand new designs for alternate characters, Omagari has also added Greek and Cyrillic to the Albertus Nova family.

Its natural authority also earned it a home in the cultural sphere, used by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on posters for its 2006 season, in almost all of film director John Carpenter’s movies, and extensively in cult 1960s TV series The Prisoner – where it appeared on everything from signs, posters and maps to food labelling and newspapers.

However its perhaps best-known for its literary uses, particularly by Faber & Faber – whom Wolpe designed more than 1,500 covers for.

“Typefaces evolve, like language,” says Omagari. “If you want to keep Albertus relevant, you have to make it evolve.”

The Wolpe Exhibition at The Type Archive, London, is open to the public until Monday 4 December and is free to visit. For opening times and more information click here.

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Toshi Omagari

Type Designer

A graduate of Musashino Art University in Tokyo, type designer Toshi Omagari joined Monotype shortly after receiving his master’s degree from the University of Reading in England. Toshi is proficient in drawing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Mongolian characters. In addition to his custom work for clients like Sir Quentin Blake and H&M, Toshi has remastered classic typefaces Metro Nova and Neue Haas Unica. “Designing type is an opportunity to maintain the visual aspects of a culture, as well as to bring it forward,” says Omagari.